Before the advent of the plasma flat screen TV, CTR televisions (cathode ray tube televisions) dominated the television market. CTRs are inexpensive to manufacture and produce bright and sharp pictures of great quality. However they do suffer form great drawbacks. First among those is their bulkiness. CRT TVs weigh a ton and are very deep, requiring quite a lot of space behind the screen. This drawback severely hinders their ease of transport and choice of placement. The bulkiness of CRT television technology also limits their practical screen size. While it is theoretically possible to manufacture CRT screens of any dimension, the tremendous weight and size of large screens would make their placement in a home quite awkward or even impossible.
Plasma screen technology is the first widespread television technology to tackle the drawbacks of CRTs head-on while still retaining a high quality picture. Plasma televisions are thin and much lighter than CRTs. Therefore, plasma televisions can be manufactured with large screen sizes that can be conveniently mounted against a wall.
Rudimentary plasma display technology was invented in 1964, and was widely used for monochrome digital displays in the 1970s and then in monochrome computer plasma monitors in the 80s and 90s. Large screen plasma TVs started appearing on the market not until 1997 with both Fujitsu and Philips introducing a 42-inch plasma flat screen TV. Those early large screen plasmas were expensive though, costing about $15,000 per set. But since then, prices have come down sharply as larger and larger screen sizes became available.
